Vol. 65 No. 228 | MONDAY | JANUARY 24, 2022 | 1 3 P a g e s | SINGLE VOLUME ECONOMIC SURVEY LIKELY, MAY PROJECT 9% GROWTH BETWEEN PIC: BHUSHAN KOYANDE THE LINES ARUNACHAL BOY FOUND, SAYS PLA C hina's People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Sunday conveyed to the Indian Army that they have "found a boy" in their territory, across Arunachal Pradesh, and will hand him over soon, days after an MP had claimed that a teenager was abducted by PLA personnel. Security sources, however, said the PLA has not confirmed the identity of the boy and it is believed that the person is Miram Taron, who was allegedly taken away by the Chinese forces on January 18 from Upper Siang district. After the incident came to light, the Indian Army had sought assistance from the PLA to trace the boy. CHINA WARNED OF SOVIET-LIKE CRASH T he blind pursuit of "absolute national security" coupled with excessive defence spending can lead to a Sovietstyle collapse, China's top foreign policy advisor has warned the ruling Communist Party headed by President Xi Jinping. The pursuit of "absolute national security" can extract a heavy price, Jia Qingguo, member of China's top political advisory body, has said, citing the collapse of the Soviet Union as proof of the pitfalls of putting military expansion over long-term security. The collapse of the Soviet Union is a major lesson that is taught in top schools across the country to avert decisions that lead to its fall. The 22-page article of Jia, who was also a former dean of the international relations school at Peking University, is full of thinly veiled criticisms against hawkish outlooks, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday. China's military budget shot up to over USD 200 billion last year and it's expected to climb further when the new budgetary proposals would be announced in March this year. Chinese analysts, however, argue that unlike the Soviet Union, China has paid equal attention to economic development. H PET HAMSTER +VE ong Kong authorities said on Sunday one hamster surrendered to authorities by pet-owners had tested positive for the Covid-19 virus and that over 2,200 hamsters had been culled as the city grappled to contain an outbreak. On Tuesday, officials ordered the killing of hamsters from dozens of pet shops after tracing a coronavirus outbreak to a worker at a shop and asked people to surrender any bought on or after December 22. EDIT HIGH-RISES AND LOW FIRE SAFETY City turns Gulf dust bowl DIPTI SINGH Mumbai The city woke up to hazy weather and dustladen winds on Sunday morning. Hazy , cloudy skies were reported over Mumbai, Pune, north Maharashtra and adjoining districts in Gujarat since Sunday morning and will prevail until early Monday the India Me, teorological Department (IMD) has warned. Visibility in several places in and around Mumbai was low on Sunday morning. Windy conditions, too, were reported from these regions. A dust storm originating in the Gulf area and Karachi, Pakistan, towards Ra- No prizes for guessing why all political majors in Punjab ran to the Election Commission of India seeking postponement of the assembly election by six days in the wake of Guru Ravidas Jayanti, when his Dalit devotees flock to Varanasi, his birthplace, to pay obeisance. The faith in the Guru apart, the parties wanted sufficient time to woo the Dalits who constitute onethird (32%) of the state’s total population of three crore. Community transmission, now; the spread is internal SWAPNIL MISHRA Mumbai The Omicron variant of Covid has reached community-transmission level, says the Indian Consortium on Genomics that goes by the acronym INSACOG. This essentially means that the further spread of Omicron in India is now expected to be through internal transmission, not foreign travellers. A revised sampling and sequencing strategy is therefore being worked out to help understand how the variant spreads and evolves, and to suggest the best possible public health response. “Omicron is in the community transmission stage and has become dominant in multiple metros like Mumbai and Delhi, where cases have been rising exponentially said the consor,” tium in its recent bulletin published on Sunday . NEW COVID-19 CASES IN MUMBAI AND 13 DEATHS n a dramatic dip, Mumbai on Sunday reported 2,550 new Covid-19 cases and 13 deaths, reinforcing the belief that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was likely to “hang around” for a while, but the Delta variant was “on its way out”. The state, of course, is yet to take a cue from Mumbai and report a sharp decline. Maharashtra reported 40,805 new Covid-19 cases and 44 deaths in the last 24 hours; the active cases in The INSACOG conducts genomic surveillance across the country through sequencing of samples from Sentinel sites; it also conducts detailed district-wise analysis for some states. (A total of 1,50,710 samples have been sequenced and 1,27,697 samples have been analysed so far by INSACOG.) The research body has made another interesting finding -- that an infectious sub-variant of Omicron the state have risen to 2,93,305. As against this, the active cases in Mumbai were pegged at 19,808. According to experts, he third wave of Covid-19 pandemic has likely peaked in the four largest cities, with Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai seeing a decline of seven-day average of cases. However, the sevenday average was still rising in the other big cities – Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Parents relieved, yet skeptical, but teachers say they're ready PRERANA PAMKAR Mumbai The debate on whether to reopen schools or not has finally been put to rest. Schools are indeed going to open on January 24, and while for stakeholders across the board (parents, principals, teachers, students), there is a sense of relief, it is mingled with a sprinkle of skepticism. The principal of Podar Jumbo Kids School, Swati Popat Vats, said that her school has followed all the prescribed guidelines and has been training teachers and support staff for months. “We also carried out safety drills to ensure teachers and support staff are confident about not only knowing the safety parameters, but are also comfortable with it and are stressfree when working with children.” Vats also said that children’s safety was a joint effort by both parents and the school. “We had an online orientation with parents to help them understand that providing children with a safe environment is a joint effort. It is something that both of us have to do together. We ensured that they feel as much a part of this process as the staff,” she said. Ms Vats also heads a private association, called ‘Early Childhood Association’. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE There are other straws in the wind. Immediately after snapping ties with its old ally the BJP over now-re, , pealed farm laws last year, the Shiromani Akali Dal had joined hands with the Bahujan Samaj Party and announced that if POLL elected they would have a Dalit deputy chief minister. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA government, which had already gauged the Dalits’ might and hence not only made Vijay Sampla, a Dalit, a Union minister but also had a Dalit minister in the coalition government led by its erstwhile ally the Shi, romani Akali Dal (SAD), before 2017. In September last year, the Congress, too, in a smart move made Charanjit Singh Channi, the state’s first Dalit (Ramdasia) chief minister, after removINSIGHT ing two-time chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, a Jat Sikh, because of bad blood within the party . However, there is a catch in the poll matrix -– despite constituting a huge vote chunk, Dalits continue to be a divided house. Prof Ronki Ram, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Chair Professor of political science, Panjab University Chandigarh, , who is visiting professor (Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences), University of Wolverhampton (UK), puts it in perspective. Despite the surge for two decades under the leadership of Kanshi Ram, who also hailed from the Ramdasia community the key stake, holders had failed to throw up a dynamic leader in Punjab. Kanshi Ram, too, had shifted his focus to Uttar Pradesh in later years with Mayawati as his political heir. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Schools re-open today State duty to protect institution of marriage? M arriage Strike was the hashtag that trended for a few days on Twitter. Behind the trend were angry and angst-ridden men who believed that their futures were being determined by feminists who were out to destroy the fabric of society by undermining the institution of marriage. They decided they would go on #MarriageStrike and not enter the Indian marriage market. This trend was hijacked by women all over the country , who celebrated the fact that they wouldn’t face the prospect of meeting such men in the marriage market. And BA.2 lineage has been detected in a considerable fraction in India. “BA.2 lineage is in a substantial fraction in India; therefore, S-gene dropoutbased screening is likely to give high false negatives. (The S-gene drop-out is a genetic variation like that of Omicron.) Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of Maharashtra’s Covid-19 taskforce is in agreement with the report. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE DOWN BUT NOT OUT ,550 I 2 COVID METER OR SHOULD IT PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF A WOMAN AS AN INDIVIDUAL? HARINI CALAMUR jasthan and neighbouring Gujarat, coupled with warmer temperatures in areas along the Arabian sea including Mumbai has led to sand particles entering and polluting the air. “A moderately high dust storm originated from the Gulf area on Saturday evening. The temperature there was warm, leading to the lifting of dust in the air. The weather is cooler in India, hence the dust storm will not sustain for long. However, the temperature in the western parts of India, including parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat towards the Arabian Sea was warmer, which made it favourable for storms to enter the country . CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Omicron changes gears The overall AQI for Mumbai deteriorated from 180 (moderate) on Sunday morning to 333 (very poor) by evening. The worst-hit was Malad, which recorded an AQI of 436. Why Dalits hold the key to Punjab RAJESH MOUDGIL Chandigarh EXPLORING BOLLYWOOD'S MOST TALENTED FEMALE CONTENT CREATORS FOR 2022 OPINION it was all quite funny But behind the in. advertent hilarity caused by the trend and the response to it, lies a very serious issue – does sexual consent exist within a marriage? This debate around marital rape has been triggered by a case before the Delhi High Court on whether the clause in section 375 of the IPC, which allows men to legally rape their wives, is constitutional. The case, heard by a twojudge bench, has generated a fair amount of conversation and controversy around the nature of marriage and the nature of consent. And indeed, whether the law has the right to intervene in it. ‘Do you have the right to rape your wife?’ or ‘Is marital rape – or non-consensual sex within a marriage – a crime?’ is currently ruling the airwaves and cyberspace. And naturally the argu, ments were heated on both sides. This is an issue that has polarised people across the middle, irrespective of other affiliations. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE ‘OLD MISTAKES BEING UNDONE’ OUR BUREAU New Delhi In an apparent swipe at previous Congress dispensations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday that attempts were made after independence to erase the contribution of many great heroes, besides the country’s culture and values; the country is now correcting mistakes of the past and reclaiming those heroes and values. "The freedom struggle involved the penance of lakhs of countrymen. But efforts were made to disregard or limit their role in history . But, today after decades of , independence, the country is correcting those mistakes". The prime minister was possibly referring to the role of ‘Netaji’ Subhas Chandra Bose, who had won the Congress presidency in 1938. In his second presidential term, he quit the Congress after disagreements with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. He then formed the Azad Hind Fauj and pursued the path of armed revolution. Addressing a gathering after unveiling a hologram statue of Netaji at the India Gate on the 125th birth anniversary of the freedom fighter, Modi also said no power in the world can prevent the country from achieving its goal of building a 'new India' before the hundredth year of independence in 2047. ‘‘Netaji used to say , ‘Never lose faith in the dream of independent India, there is no power in the world that can shake India.’ CONTD. ON NATION PAGE 270c. 160c. Sunrise: 07:14 am Sunset : 06:27 pm A KING’S CANOPY FOR BOSE Bose statue in space vacated by King George V not appropriate, say heritage activists KUNAL DUTT New Delhi Nearly 50 years after a statue of Subhas Chandra Bose replaced that of King Edward VII in Old Delhi, 'Netaji' is set to take the hallowed space left behind by his son King George V under an ornamental canopy facing the India Gate. In 1939, an imposing marble statue of King George V at the site near India Gate was unveiled by the then viceroy as a memorial to the British monarch under whose reign the capital of 'New Delhi' was built, according to archival records. However, both statues were ousted in the late 1960s. The canopy at the India Gate, which has been lying empty since 1968, will now house a granite statue of Netaji, with official sources saying its installation will be a case of India "reclaiming" its history . A section of historians and heritage activists, however, have lamented the "sudden transition" of "this sacred landscape", and said, any change in this heritage precinct should have been done only after "due deliberations and proper public consultations". CONTD. ON NATION PAGE